A Good Week

This was a good week on so many levels, but a hard one as well. Hard in that we’ve been in the middle of having the condo painted - well, the living room, entryway and master bedroom, which together encompass about half the square footage of the condo.  But it looks so clean and fresh now! Now that it’s done, we’ve been unpacking All The Things we boxed up over the last two weeks. The new blinds for the back half of the house will be installed on Monday, so I’m going to wait for that before I take pictures. Oh, and we need to rehang everything, just like when we first moved in. So I need to get my sons over here to do most of that because we have some heavy pictures and mirrors or things that need a stud finder and laser level. I’ve also been updating switchplate covers and rearranging furniture. Where’s a darn magic wand when you need one? 

And speaking of switchplates (couldn’t resist that segue), here are my switchplate blocks for July. The color of the month for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge is purple, and I got a good start this week on that color. 

These 15 switchplate blocks will finish at 3x5”.  After that I moved on to my flying geese blocks, inspired by the blocks that my friend Cathy of Sane, Crazy and Crumby made last year.  They’re a great way to use up miscellaneous black print scraps. 

One of my very favorite things to do at the start of every month is to sort through the scrap basket for the new color of the month. Last weekend as I was sorting through the purples, I found a baggie of 50-some cute novelty squares measuring 4.5”. Well, I opened the bag and out popped a SQUIRREL! It took no time to find three matching fabrics to use in large chunks or minimal yardages. I cut out the needed 4.5” squares, and in roughly an hour, had this cutie of a top up on the design board. 

Then Cousin Kim came over on Wednesday, and we spent some time sewing. I got it fully webbed vertically and the first three rows done horizontally. I looooooooove this happy little gem! 

It may get a solid border - I’ll just wait until it’s completely sewn before I make a decision. I do know that the blue will also be the backing and binding. I have 8.5 yards of it from an estate sale and will be using it to back several quilts this month and possibly into next month!

Yesterday was an interesting 4th of July. It started off hot, then at about 1pm a rain, hail and thunderstorm rolled through. Although it measured less than a quarter inch total, it was a fierce storm for about 10 minutes. Two minutes later, the sun was out, and I snapped the picture below from our front door. I can see that the wind blew one side of the bunting off the front gate (left side).  Bruce and I did go out for awhile, and when we got home an hour later, the rain picked up again. At least things were damp, and that allayed my fears of fireworks starting a brush fire in our parched area. 

I did run to the store in the morning yesterday to do some grocery shopping. They had the most beautiful (and delicious) apricots there, so I bought these to make some apricot jam today! 

I’ll leave you with pictures of Darla and Alfie snoozing away in the living room. They are very happy that the Strange Mans who were here moving furniture and painting are gone. Obviously, the whole process of supervising exhausted them. (Ha! They found excellent new hiding places for the duration). 

Darling Darla (whom I also call “Darlicious”)

Alfie (AKA “Mr. Cat”) in his best shrimp pose

Please tell me we’re not the only ones who have several nicknames for our cats! Darla is DarDar, Darlicious, Darling Darla, and Miss Kitty.  Alfie (Alfalfa) is Mr. Cat, Himself, and Al. 

On that note, I’m off to go make some jam. I also have some raspberries to make raspberry jam, so my morning is spoken for. But the afternoon will (hopefully) see me in the sewing room! Have a great week!

And the Heat Goes On

Yeah, I guess it’s no surprise to experience heat during the summertime. We haven’t even set up our new umbrella in the courtyard, because sun or shade, it’s just too hot to sit out there. Maybe a big fan and some icy drinks are in order. Or maybe I’ll just sit here inside and pound out a blog post instead! Besides, I hate to think about the drought conditions, the tinder dry brush, stiff breezes and the da** fireworks stands that are popping up everywhere. Our local legislators (probably Darwin Award candidates) are MIA on the issue. And you can bet that some other Darwin Award candidate will do something stupid and start a fire. But enough of my rant. I’ve got more immediate things to focus on!

We’re having our condo painted this week. Well, not all of it since we just remodeled the kitchen and dining area last year. But our living room and master bedroom are getting fresh coats of paint. The living room will be the same Sherwin Williams “Steamed Milk” (off white, boringly basic) of the kitchen, and the bedroom will be S-W Acanthus (a soft sage-y green). They are supposed to be done on Monday. My housekeeper and I will get to work vacuuming before the painters move the furniture back. And then there will be dusting, scrubbing, etc.  Luckily, my calendar is totally clear for next week! 

I got a surprising amount of sewing done this week, given how crazy busy the week started out. HOA meetings and projects took up three days, but then all of a sudden things were quiet!

This month’s color in the Rainbow Scrap Challenge has been orange. My first priority this week was sewing these four Weathervane blocks that will finish at 12”. 

Uh-oh. I just saw it; the error on the lower left block. It will be my first order of business in the sewing room today! 

I really knocked back my orange scraps this month, and I couldn’t be happier about it. I had more than enough 2.5” squares of orange to come up with these orange color variations of the Paint Chips blocks. 

And then all that was left was to clean up the crumbs, which yielded 8 crumb blocks that will measure 6” finished. They’ll be tucked away in the block orphanage until new blocks join them next year. 

My last gasp of sewing before starting on this post was to sew together these string blocks and accent fabric into seven rows of five. I have it turned sideways to fit on the design board, so it looks like five rows of seven. I still need to sew the rows together; six short seams and it will be a completed top.

These blocks are 8” (finished) each, so the quilt will finish at or around 40x56”. I’ve got one more like this to sew up of 8” blocks, and then a set of multi-colored string blocks at 6” to assemble into a top. When all three tops are sewn, I’ll pin baste them all, which I prefer to do in batches. I doubt if any of them will be finished in June, but they should give me an early start on July! 

Have a wonderful and safe Independence Day to my US friends. For everyone else, I hope your July 4th is a great day too! 

Gardening and Sewing

 Well, my photos loaded in the exact opposite order that I thought they would (why can’t Blogger be consistent?), so this post is titled Gardening and Sewing instead of Sewing and Gardening. . 

We have two tomato plants this year, one regular and one cherry tomato. There are six tomatoes on the regular plant, and my mouth is already watering for BLT sandwiches with fresh garden tomatoes!

The Asiatic and day lilies are blooming their little heads off right now. They were here when we moved in, but it is clear to me that they need to be moved a bit to give them both more “elbow room”. The Greenstalk planter is also blooming profusely with white petunias. The hydrangea in the foreground is being timid. 

Most of my sewing this week was done in the early part of the week. After Tuesday I never really made it back to my sewing room except to pack up everything I’m taking to Quilts for Kids today. 

The color of the month for June in the Rainbow Scrap Challenge is orange. I had so much fun sewing these 30 orange string blocks at 6.5” each, unfinished size. They are shown here in two sets of 15, which is how our chapter of QFK likes them.

The first set of string blocks have a common center string - the orange check. But with the brightness of all the orange, they don’t really register as a pattern to the eye. But that’s OK.  It was the largest in quantity of all the orange strings, so I wanted to get at least one piece in each block.

The second set of string blocks is more random. Do you see any fabrics that you have (or have had) in your stash?

I will also be doing 6.5” crumb blocks for the kits in addition to the strings. But crumbs are usually among the last blocks I sew of any given color each month to maximize the scraps I have from sewing other blocks. So we’ll see if there are enough crumbs to sew 15 blocks. 

Actually, I sewed my two remaining bat blocks before I did the string blocks above. I have to thank Past Cathy for having cut out all the pieces about 3 months ago when I sewed the first two. It saved me so much time and worry this week! Surprisingly, they were a breeze to sew this time. 

The photo below shows everything just placed willy-nilly (a technical art term haha) on the design board. The center panel will need to have a black border added to match up to the four blocks that will run along each sides. The four bats will to in each corner of the quilt top, leaving two blocks left to sew for the remains spots along the top and bottom edges. I have the blocks selected and will do two in July and two in August. Assembly will begin after that so it will be ready for use this year. 

And here’s a teaser: Kat Scribner (Scrapbox Quilts) and I are working together on a developing a Quilt-Along that we’d love for you to join us on. More details will be forthcoming from both of us in the coming weeks. It’s even something that could be done in conjunction with the RSC. Stay tuned!

Three Quilt Finishes!

It’s been a great week for sewing. With no HOA stuff other than a few phone calls, and Bruce’s help with some chores, the week just sailed by. My eye is healing well and I don’t go back for three weeks. All restrictions are lifted with the exception of heavy lifting and swimming. I can live with that. You’ll find me out in the garden later today, planting all the rest of my groundcovers. And I do believe a celebratory trip to the garden center will be in the cards next week!

But let’s get to the quilt finishes. First up is Rainbow Candies I. Yep, I finished RCI and RCII in reverse order. So this is the second of two, but it was the first one sewn into a top. Who cares now, though, right? Regardless, these were made from blocks sewn in the Rainbow Scrap Challenge in 2023.

It finished up like the last one at 42.5 x 51.5”. This one, though, has the same bright fabric for the sashing and border (and backing and binding). 

The second quilt finished was the beauty from Susan L that I showed last week being pin basted. It measures approximately 60x72” and will be heading to the women’s shelter here in the valley. I had to pin it sideways on the design board for its final photo.

The quilting was done with a serpentine stitch in the ditch vertically and horizontally and then diagonally as well. Thank you, Susan, for donating this quilt. I really enjoyed working on it!! 

The third finish, which happened yesterday, was Green-Eyed Monster. It was so named because despite green being my favorite color, I do not like this quilt. But it used up a lot of ugly scraps and orphan blocks, so it does have that going for it! I sewed up the top last month when the Rainbow Scrap Challenge color was green. It looks crazy wonky in the photo, but that’s my pinning skills (meaning lack thereof) for you…

I sure do love the woodland-themed backing fabric, though. I forgot to measure the finished quilt, but I’ll be sure to do that and record it before it’s donated next Saturday at Quilts for Kids. 

And there was even more sewing. Here are 12 flying geese blocks (inspired by Cathy at Sane, Crazy and Crumby). They will finish at 6x6”. 

In the coming week I’ll be focusing on sewing up the final two (of 4) 12.5” bat blocks for my Halloween quilt-in-the-making. I’m doing two per month and will only have four blocks to go after these. I’ll also tackle my orange strings as a reward for every half hour spent on the fiddly bats. Those darn bat blocks have a bazillion pieces (only a slight exaggeration) per block. I’m hoping to preserve my sanity by alternating between bats and strings.

I’ll leave you with a couple pictures of the Little Cottonwood Creek that runs through our little condo complex. We are so blessed to live in this beautiful place! The creek is at peak level now because the snowpack is coming down fast due to the recent extreme high temperatures. So far, though, I haven’t heard of any flooding. 

Have a great week, my friends!

The Eyes Have It!

On Thursday I had a cataract in my right eye removed. YAY! My vision is still blurry, as I was told to expect, but in my follow-up visit on Friday, everything looked great. There has been no pain and only minor discomfort on the afternoon of the surgery. And other than a few annoying restrictions, it’s been smooth sailing. I’m officially able to drive again beginning today, although I’m not allowed to lift anything over 10 pounds or bend down to pick things up (or do any gardening). I’m mindful of keeping my head above my shoulders as instructed, so deep knee bends get things done in a pinch. Well, that and Bruce helping out. I have another post-op re-check next Friday.

So, ahead of the procedure on Thursday, I spent Tuesday and Wednesday preparing for my forced downtime. I did the weekly grocery shopping and hauled a load of stuff to the Goodwill store. I had originally planned to participate in our community-wide yard sale today, but realized I really didn’t have that much stuff AND I wouldn’t be able to unload it all anyway. So a preemptive donation was the best solution. But the most fun preparation during those two days was pin basting four quilts all on Tuesday afternoon. 

I didn’t snap photos of all four, but I did snap a picture of the one I haven’t shown you yet. This is a large lap quilt donated by my friend Susan L in Iowa. It will go to our local women’s shelter because it’s more appropriate for that in addition to exceeding our Quilts for Kids size limits.

After completing the top, Susan wasn’t enamored by it, so she sent it to me to complete. I have to tell you that I really enjoyed basting this one. The fabrics are not my usual style or colors (I try to do bright kids quilts, after all), but it was fascinating to me to study these interesting fabrics and how they were combined. It’s such a peaceful, low-key quilt, which I’m sure will be greatly appreciated by a woman in the shelter! 

I also basted the two Rainbow Candies quilts and the green column monstrosity quilt from last month. Anyway, here’s the first quilt finished; finishing the other three are my highest priority for the coming week.

This is Rainbow Candies II. I ran out of the sashing fabric (since it’s the sashing and backing for both of the candy quilts) so had to add the bright chartreuse outer border on this one. I quilted it in quick loops and it finished at 42.5x51.5”. Below is the backing and label.

Last Sunday, when Ruby, Kimmie and I were sewing (have I told you that we call it The Church of Bernina?) I finished fifteen of these Switchplate blocks. They’ll finish at 3x5”.

Here’s something else I haven’t talked about or shown. Beginning last March when several of us attended our local Worldwide Quilting Day event, I began sewing multi-colored string blocks in an 8.5” size.  I usually sew them at 6.5”, but my string stash had (has?) been multiplying faster than I can deal with. I figured the larger size block might eat up strings faster. The jury is still out on that, because before I knew it, I had enough strings for two kids’ quilts. 

This is not a sewn top; the blocks are just slapped up on the design wall. I have another one just like it with a small navy and white print as the “solid”. Both will finish at about 40x56” - a good size for a kid. And I can use a 42” wide backing when I machine quilt them eventually. I can get 4 solid blocks from an 8.5” WOF strip. With a little piecing of WOF leftovers, it takes about 34” for the solid accent.

But I’ll be going back to my 6.5” block size. Quilts for Kids has a lot of solid fabric donations, so from now on I can just turn in 6.5” multi-colored string blocks (in groups of 15, like I do for the solid-color string blocks) for them to put into kits for other sewists. 

I think that’s about it. Bruce wants me to take him to the grocery store to get some pumpkin chocolate chip cookies, his favorite. They didn’t have them when I shopped on Wednesday, and he’s going through cookie withdrawals! 

Linking up to Scrappy Saturday at Angela’s blog for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge.

Have a great week!

Another May Comes to a Close

May has been a lovely month here in the Salt Lake Valley and in my sewing room as well. Plenty of sunshine outside and sewing progress inside. It’s been fun working with green scraps, and I was able to finish the last of my planned Rainbow Scrap Challenge blocks for the month. Let’s dig in. 

Green is a color I have a lot of, so I decided to make 8 Paint Chip blocks this month instead of the usual 4-6. These are just 8.5” blocks sewn with 2.5” squares and an occasional 2.5x4.5” rectangle thrown into the mix. The pattern of colors and neutrals, at least for me, is deliberately varied. Here are my green blocks for the month.

I love playing with the different greens like mint, olive, forest, etc. and coming up with different blocks within a given colorway. Admittedly there are some squares that could be at home in a different block, but overall it seems to work. 

Here are all my Paint Chip blocks so far for this year.

Naturally, I’ll keep going. I’m going to need a total of 48 blocks. Right now there are 28. I may go back and do a couple more pink and yellow, but we’ll see what the scraps yield with the other colors first. I’m just having fun and enjoying this process. It’s such a simple block. I only saw a single picture of an unnamed block like this on Pinterest last year. I have no viable link for it, nor any idea of what the original creator’s plan was. So this has been a fun romp through colors and patterns for me. 

That finished up my green blocks, so I moved on to the 12.5” Halloween blocks. I’m trying to do two per month through August. At that time I’ll have enough to assemble a quilt top around my chosen panel. This month, I inadvertently chose two rather similar blocks in that they both have black and neutral little four-patches in the corners (different sizes, though). They won’t be placed next to each other in the quilt. 

In June I’ll be doing the third and fourth bat blocks for the corners and will show everything together at that time. 

I didn’t get any quilt tops finished this week, although Rainbow Candies II only needs a few more seams to attach the rows together. That will be done today. 

My friend Susan L from Iowa sent me another lovely quilt top to quilt and donate. I did get a backing made for it, so that will join these candy quilts (and my green column quilt top) to be basted early this week. Four of them, yep. Hopefully I can get those done on Monday and Tuesday (just the basting part, not the quilting and binding. I’m not *that* delusional)  because Wednesday is an all-day infusion for Bruce - the last one, thank goodness - and on Thursday I have my right eye cataract removed. Not sure what Friday will bring except another eye doctor post-surgery appointment for me, so I’m not planning any activities that day. 

Last week at the quilt expo I bought some pale pink Kona fabric, so here are all the fabrics I’ve gathered for my grandson’s Storm at Sea wedding quilt. I still think I’d like to replace the one second-from-left with something a bit more green. And that steel blue may be jettisoned too. Or instead. But it’s better to have more colors to play with, even if I have lots of leftovers. (Muahahahaha!)

Cutting for the Storm at Sea will begin in June after I finish the four quilts mentioned above. 

With the long weekend last week, I was able to get most of the work done in the courtyard for this year. I hired a wonderful hardworking couple for a few hours, and they came on Friday to dig up two old shrubs, limb up the Japanese Maple, haul out the old bark mulch, straighten out the stone flower bed borders and spread the new topsoil. 

On Saturday I went to the garden center and bought lots of annual flowers and a couple tomato plants. I planted them in my flower pots, my revolving grow tower, and in the beds. And I finished planting all the perennials except for some ground cover. I think I’ll go back sometime soon to get a few more annuals to fill in this year until the new perennials grow and fill out the beds more

The brunnera from last year is quite a bit bigger than the two I added this year (with broad silvery-green leaves), but they’ll catch up in a year or two. The hosta in the back corner is a new addition as are the delphiniums, calla lily, astilbe and groundcovers of lamium and ageratum. 

I like adding pots into the beds for height and color. The white pots are filled with my amaryllis bulbs, and they’ll enjoy the summer outdoors until it’s time to bring them inside in late summer and begin prepping them for the winter. 

The photo below is the same basic view only shifted up so you can see the tree canopy. 

Looking at the tree and beds from the other side. 

It’s a small courtyard, but I love making it my own. And aren’t the edging pavers nice and straight now? They looked like crooked teeth before!

I decided to leave the barberry bush above because I do enjoy its color and height. We have a new blue patio umbrella to set up as soon as our family members come get the older white one and its little table. It’s too heavy for Bruce and I to move, and the big umbrella opens like a small rain umbrella - you have to push it up and place a pin through the pole to hold it up. It takes both Bruce and I to open and close it. With Bruce only having one arm, it’s just not practical. So we bought a big new blue umbrella with a crank mechanism. Who’d-a thunk?

This year I took one tier off my vertical planter because the top tier was too high and heavy for me to lift in place. So there are only four tiers and the top water reservoir. I’ll fill in more of the planting pockets with annuals, but maybe not all of them. I don’t want to worry about having to rotate it all the time, so I may keep sun-loving petunias on one half and shade-loving impatiens on the shade side. We’ll see. I want to rest, not work, this weekend! I took these pictures early in the week, and it’s already amazing how much these white petunias (a first for me) have grown since these pictures were taken. 

Here’s a different view of the same bed. 

Below: tomatoes, roses and lilies reaching for the morning sun. 

Have a good week my friends. I’ll meet you back here next week! 

Green Everywhere!

I love green. The month of May is always green here in the Salt Lake Valley, and it’s just about my favorite month (along with October). Here’s a view of our street decked out in green. 

Besides the green outside, we are sewing green scraps in May for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge. More on that a bit later in the post. 

Bruce and I also decided that when we repaint the master bedroom next month (meaning, when we have it and the living room repainted by professionals), we’re having the bedroom done in a light sage green. The light through the bedroom windows is filtered through trees and there is no escaping the green cast it gives the now-cream walls. So, we’ll just embrace it! We are also getting new window coverings along the back of the house (4 windows). That’s the extent of the major house redecorating projects this year. Except the courtyard. I hired a local couple to come in and help me remove the old topsoil, straighten out the stone edgings on the beds, dig out two old shrubs and spread the new topsoil. So, later today I’ll finally get to visit the garden store to buy flowers for my pots and purchase some more perennial and annual flowers to fill the beds. Maybe I’ll finally have some garden pictures next week! 

But let’s set the Time Machine back to last Saturday when Cousin Kim, Ruby and I went to the Sewing and Quilt Expo. This time the Expo was not very large - I think the major quilt show promoters have long since abandoned this market. But it was OK. The quilts displayed were all from the Utah Quilt Guild. There were scores, if not a couple hundred, quilts from huge king-sized quilts down to small wall hangings. Some were sewn for fun, others for challenges, the whole gamut. I snapped photos of my favorites, and here’s a small sampling. 

My favorite was this Bird Houses quilt. It wasn’t until I was uploading the pictures from my phone to my iPad (from which I write my blogposts) that I read the information tag for this quilt and realized it was sewn and quilted by my friend Bernadette Turner from Quilts for Kids! 

I was so enchanted by the pattern, the critters in the windows, and the rainbow scrap nature of this lovely quilt. Now I want to make one! 

This next quilt was truly stunning. It was not a Halloween quilt per se, but definitely an Autumn Forest, moody quilt. The affixed crystals gave it a magnificent, sparkly presence. 

This little collaged orange tree captured my heart.

And talk about color! This next quilt was just a riot of color pattern and, well, its title says it all - FUN!

And of course I had to take a picture of a kitty quilt! See the mice scampering around the border?

And this bookcase quilt reminded me of the one I did many years ago (see HERE). But the maker cleverly embroidered actual book titles on hers, whereas my book titles were from selvages.

So that was it for the quilt expo. The only thing I bought was 3 yards of a pale pink Kona cotton for the upcoming attempt at sewing a Storm at Sea quilt. 

But with my green scraps, I not only attempted but actually completed 15 green crumb blocks, which will finish at 6”. These, like my string blocks, are going to Quilts for Kids for their kit-making. 

Next I sewed up four Weathervane blocks. 

And then I began putting together the next Rainbow Candies quilt from some old RSC blocks. 

I had enough of the fun multi-colored fabric to cut for the backing of both quilts, plus the sashings. However on this second top, I’ll have to add the green solid as the outer border. But that’s just fine with me. Once I get this top sewn up, hopefully over the long Memorial Day weekend, I plan to baste both the rainbow candy quilt tops and the green column quilt I showed partially constructed last week. 

I would have gotten more sewing done this week, but we spent 2 days at the Huntsman Cancer Center while Bruce had a six-hour infusion done on Wednesday and again on Thursday. Next week and the week after we’ll only have to go one day per week for about 3 hours. The infusions help kill the excess white blood cells produced by his CLL (chronic leukemia) plus fortify him with goodies (my technical medical term) that will help give him some more energy. Unfortunately, during the course of the treatments, he is more susceptible to infections, notably Covid and shingles. Yes, shingles - even though he’s had the vaccinations. They don’t really know yet why those two particular diseases are more troublesome, but hopefully forewarned is forearmed. Bruce always masks up whenever he leaves the house and avoids large groups of people. 

Thanks for dropping by! For those who observe, I hope you have a safe and fun Memorial Day weekend. And for those who don’t observe it, I hope you have a safe and fun weekend as well!